WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's hosting of the G20 summit next year will be a boon to its image as well as its economy, equivalent in prestige to the Seoul Olympics in 1988, a scholar said Friday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper officially announced this morning that Canada and South Korea will be co-hosting a G20 Summit in Muskoka, the focus of which will be the economy.

The summit will take place either immediately before or after the scheduled G8 Summit at the Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville and may be held at the same location.

“This is a great honour for Muskoka and for Canada,” said Parry Sound-Muskoka member of Parliament Tony Clement, who hosted a press conference with Huntsville mayor Claude Doughty following the prime minister’s announcement. “The eyes of the world will be on Muskoka and mark my words we will be ready for that.”

According to Clement, plans to host the G20 have been in the works for some time but a decision came to a head during the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, held late this week.

The South Korean government was scheduled to host a G20 Summit in April but has rescheduled it to the fall in order to co-host it with Canada.

I suppose there could be more than one G 20 summit, but it sounds, from the Canadian report, that it will be a shared summit. {half amused, pseudo outrage}They don't care about Canada!{/}

I'm not a beefeater guy - except for gin, I guess. Still, it would be nice to have that cleared up.

Brian, I didn't think things through. I hardly imagined that there would be more than one summit in a year. Actually, I am not sure if I care enough to look into previous years. Still, the idea seems sound - take time to introduce your concerns, then leave enough time to think about them before making decisions.